8 Books to Read if You Love Prime Video's ‘Reacher'
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Ever since it premiered its first season back in 2022, Nick Santora’s Reacher has been a major streaming hit and pop culture phenomenon, becoming one of Prime Video’s flagship shows. Based on Lee Child’s Jack Reacher novels and starring Alan Ritchson in the lead role, the series has been a consistent success with both critics and audiences for years now, and the show has developed a massive fan following. And if you’re a Reacher fan hungry for more like it, it’s time to hit the bookstore.
The obvious choice for more Reacher is, of course, the Jack Reacher book series, the 31st of which was released in October 2026, written by Child’s brother Andrew Child. But beyond those, there are a lot of great books out there that feature characters similar to Reacher and/or explore comparable stories of crime, action, and mystery. Without further ado, here’s our handpicked selection of books to read if you love Reacher.
1 ‘Zero Day’ (2011)
Arguably the most Reacher book that’s not a Reacher book, David Baldacci’s Zero Day is the first novel in the author’s John Puller series. Like Reacher, Puller is the perfect combination of brains and brawn — built like a mountain and the smartest guy in most rooms — and he applies those talents in service of his country as the best investigator in the US Army’s Criminal Investigations Division. The novel follows him on a shocking case in remote West Virginia that he soon suspects may be part of something much bigger than he initially anticipated.
Baldacci has built quite a reputation as an author of highly suspenseful thrillers, and Zero Day is fairly representative of his work. It’s a genre book, the kind you might pick up in an airport bookstore, and a masterfully executed one at that. With a charismatic protagonist and plenty of twists and turns to keep you on your toes, Zero Day and its three sequels are an excellent read for fans of Reacher.
2 ‘Elvis Cole and Joe Pike’ Series (1987–Present)
Created by Robert Crais, Elvis Cole and Joe Pike are Los Angeles-based private investigators introduced in the 1987 novel The Monkey’s Raincoat. Since then, the series has expanded to include nineteen more books, all following Cole and Pike into L.A.’s sordid underbelly in various cases, some of which tie back to their own pasts. The latest book in the series, The Big Empty, was released in 2025.
Robert Crais may not be as internationally popular as Lee Child, but the author has been hailed by many as one of America’s best crime writers. His Elvis Cole and Joe Pike novels are easily among the most engaging detective books of all time, with decades' worth of stories to explore. Witty, surprisingly emotional, and anchored by a charismatic duo who are perfectly matched, the Elvis Cole and Joe Pike series is a delightful read for all fans of sharp crime fiction.
3 ‘Capture or Kill’ (2024)
Vince Flynn’s Mitch Rapp is a modern literary action hero who has appeared in 20+ novels since his first appearance in 2010’s American Assassin. Capture or Kill isn’t one of Flynn’s books, but it is the first Mitch Rapp novel written by the franchise’s current author, Don Bentley. Set in 2011, the book revolves around the United States government’s efforts to capture or kill Osama bin Laden. A highly effective CIA assassin, Mitch Rapp is brought in to gather crucial intel and foil the plans of an Iranian foe bent on upending the power structures of the Middle East.
Though perhaps not as popular as the Reacher franchise, the Mitch Rapp series is a successful line of thriller novels, and Capture or Kill marks the beginning of an exciting new era for the series. Blending real-life facts with gripping spy fiction, the novel is an excellent read that stays true to the late Vince Flynn’s style while expanding the world in interesting ways. Since its publication in 2024, Capture or Kill has been followed by two sequels, 2025’s Denied Access and 2026’s Double Tap, both written by Bentley.
Collider Exclusive · Action Franchise Quiz What Action Series Would You Thrive In? Wick · Fast · Mission · Die Hard
Four franchises. Four completely different ideas of what a hero is: the assassin with a code, the family that never leaves anyone behind, the man who does his own stunts, and the guy who simply refuses to die. Only one of them runs on your particular brand of trouble. Eight questions will tell you which one you would survive.
🐕Wick
🏁Fast
🧨Mission
🎄Die Hard
01
How does a room know you've walked into it? Every action hero arrives differently. Some of them arrive before they arrive.
02
It turns physical. What does your fighting actually look like? Choreography is character. Yours says something about you.
03
Who is standing beside you when it starts? Some franchises are built on a team. Others are built on one person walking in alone.
04
It has gone badly wrong. What keeps you upright? Act two exists to find out what you're actually made of.
05
There's a vehicle. What are you driving, and how? No action franchise has ever survived without a car chase. This one is yours.
06
How do you feel about the people giving the orders? There is always an institution. There is rarely a good one.
07
Underneath all of it, what are you actually doing this for? The stunts are the reason people come. This is the reason they stay.
08
When the credits roll, what do people say about you? Every franchise is really an argument about what makes someone worth watching.
Casting Has Been Completed Your Franchise Is…
Four action series. One of them is built around exactly the way you handle pressure, people, and a room that has just gone very quiet. Here is where you would survive the trilogy, and probably headline it.
John Wick
You are precision with a grudge. You don't posture, you don't escalate, and you don't warn anybody twice. That is exactly why the people who know you are so careful never to be the reason you start.
- The Wick films run on discipline: an underworld with actual etiquette, a hero who honours every rule of it, and a world that unravels the instant someone breaks one against him.
- You share that quality. You are extraordinarily reasonable right up to the line, and then completely immovable past it.
- Focus, commitment and sheer will. You'd be the one carrying grief through three sequels and turning it into technique rather than noise.
- People wouldn't call you dangerous. They'd say your name quietly and let that do the work.
Fast & Furious
You understand the thing the whole franchise is secretly about: the cars are spectacular, but the crew is the point. You collect people, you keep them, and you'd drive through a building for any one of them.
- This series went from street racing to orbit without ever changing its actual subject, because loyalty scales and plot doesn't have to.
- You have the same instinct. You build a family out of whoever turns up, and then you defend it past the point of reason.
- You'd thrive here because the franchise rewards exactly your strengths: warmth, nerve, an absolute refusal to leave anyone behind, and a relaxed relationship with physics.
- The mission can wait. The barbecue cannot.
Mission: Impossible
You over-prepare and then take the dangerous part yourself anyway. It looks like control, but it's really responsibility. You have never worked out how to ask somebody else to carry the risk.
- This is the franchise of the plan that collapses on schedule: the team, the mask, the rooftop, and the one person sprinting flat out because sprinting is all that's left.
- You share that refusal to accept an outcome. Told the odds, you treat them as an administrative error.
- You'd thrive here because these films reward competence and loyalty in equal measure. The mission matters, but nobody on the team gets left on the wrong side of a door.
- Some people delegate the cliff. You have never once been that person.
Die Hard
You are not the most trained person in the building, the best equipped, or the one anybody would have picked. You are simply the one still standing at the end, which turns out to be the only qualification that matters.
- Die Hard invented the modern action hero by making him mortal: outgunned, out-planned, bleeding, and extremely funny about it.
- You share that stubbornness. Adversity doesn't make you noble, it makes you sarcastic, and then it makes you unstoppable.
- You'd thrive here because these films reward improvisation and nerve over preparation, and you've never had the luxury of preparing anyway.
- You didn't want any of this. You just declined to be the person who let it happen.
4 ‘Red Queen’ (2018)
Written by Spanish author Juan Gómez-Jurado and translated into English by Nicholas Caistor, Red Queen is a mystery thriller novel that’s the first book in the Antonia Scott series. The story introduces Antonia Scott, the daughter of a British diplomat and a Spanish mother, who has a uniquely gifted mind that allows her to see connections others do not. After a personal tragedy, Antonia attempts to retreat from the world, but she’s brought out of her self-imposed retirement by a terrifying new case.
Often compared to Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy (and its protagonist, Lisbeth Salander), Gómez-Jurado’s Antonia Scott novels are easily among the best thriller books of the past decade. An international bestseller that’s also earned high critical acclaim, Red Queen is a fast-paced crime read with the right balance of chills, thrills, humor, and emotion. The book was followed by two sequels, Black Wolf and White King, and a thriller series based on the novels, also titled Red Queen, premiered on Prime Video in 2024.
5 ‘The Day of the Jackal’ (1971)
A classic political thriller novel written by Frederick Forsyth, The Day of the Jackal revolves around a professional assassin who is hired by French dissidents to kill Charles de Gaulle, the president of France. As the Jackal makes preparations for the kill, investigators uncover details of the plot and race against time to capture the assassin before he can finish the job. The book is inspired partly by true events — there was indeed an attempt to assassinate de Gaulle in 1962, which the book opens with — but the actual story is a work of fiction.
The Day of the Jackal was a big hit when it was first published in 1971, winning the Edgar Award for Best Novel in 1972. The novel has remained consistently popular ever since and has inspired multiple film and TV adaptations around the world, most recently the 2024 Sky-Peacock series starring Eddie Redmayne and Lashana Lynch. The Day of the Jackal is a thriller classic that’s highly suspenseful and thoroughly engrossing, and easily one of the most iconic novels in its genre.
6 ‘Bourne’ Series (1980–Present)
Created by Robert Ludlum, the Bourne series is a collection of spy novels that started with 1980’s The Bourne Identity. The books follow Jason Bourne, whose story begins with him being found by fishermen in the Mediterranean Sea, with no idea who he is or how he got there. As he slowly recalls the pieces of his lost past, Bourne feels compelled to hunt down an international terrorist and finds unsettling evidence that he may be an assassin himself.
The Bourne novels and the movies they inspired are very different beasts entirely. Where the films focus on high-intensity action, the novels are gripping Cold War thrillers that are more about tradecraft and intrigue than just violence and explosions. Ludlum wrote three of the Bourne books, including 1986’s The Bourne Supremacy and 1990’s The Bourne Ultimatum. After his death, the series has been continued by authors Eric Van Lustbader and Brian Freeman, with the latest (and 22nd) novel, The Bourne Revenge, released in 2026.
7 ‘Orphan X’ (2016)
Written by Gregg Hurwitz, Orphan X is a thriller novel that’s the first book in the series. The novel follows Evan Smoak, a former government assassin who helps people in need, going by the codename “The Nowhere Man." When a meeting with a client leads Evan into an ambush, he finds himself hunted by the program that created him.
A pulpy modern thriller hit that captures the gritty energy of genre classics like the Bourne series and the Jack Ryan novels, Orphan X is a thoroughly absorbing read from start to finish. Thrilling and suspenseful, with plenty of action, the book is an entertaining introduction to one of the best novel series of the 21st century. Today, the Orphan X series includes 12 books. There have been multiple attempts to adapt the novels for film or television, though none of them have panned out just yet.
8 ‘Patriot Games’ (1987)
Written by Tom Clancy, Patriot Games is the second published book in Clancy’s Jack Ryan series and the first chronologically. The novel follows Ryan, a former U.S. Marine lieutenant, who foils a kidnapping attempt on the Prince and Princess of Wales while holidaying in London. The incident makes him a target of the Irish terrorist group behind the failed kidnapping, putting his family in danger.
Jack Ryan and Reacher have been popularly compared and contrasted for practically as long as both have been around; especially these days, with Prime Video boasting hit adaptations of both. But though Reacher and Jack Ryan may share a first name and military connections, the two book series are vastly different, with the Jack Ryan books (Patriot Games, in particular) taking a more cerebral approach that reflects the geopolitics of their time. It may not be the actual first book of the series, but Patriot Games is an excellent introduction to Jack Ryan for new readers. The novel also inspired a film adaptation starring Harrison Ford in 1992.
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